A despicable act carried out by an obviously deranged and deeply troubled human being in my home city of Sydney, Australia, will create a shock wave to the Australian way of for some time to come. It is my hope Australia does not follow the American example: overreach based on fear and ignorance. Every terrorist attack carried out on Western soil is done so for the purpose of forcing the respective government to react in the same way Bin Laden predicated the U.S. would react: a policing and military response that alienates and harasses the Muslim population. Alienation and harassment that becomes the terrorists greatest recruitment tool. Its vitally crucial Australians realize there is no evidence to suggest Muslims are radicalized by a sudden religious awakening. Rather, every study into terrorism, including the Pentagons own 2004 study, demonstrates that radicalization is rooted in a geo-political awakening, and/or a cocktail of politics, revenge, humiliation and resistance to occupation. Since 9/11, public discussion as it relates to the roots of Islamic terrorism has been confined to an examination of the “evil mindset” of the terrorists themselves. In the eyes of Western media, and the general public at large, Islamic scripture and theology is what radicalizes terrorists – and any discussion beyond that risks being dismissed as “Muslim apologetics” at best, and terrorist sympathy at worst. Answers to the question of what drives this process [radicalization] are to exclude ascribing any causative role to the actions of Western governments or their allies in other parts of the world instead, individual psychological or theological journeys, are claimed to be the root cause of the radicalization process, writes NYU professor Arun Kundnani. For Western governments, and their military and homeland security benefactors, it remains convenient to root terrorism in religious ideology rather than in the political interaction of Western foreign policy and Muslim terrorist groups. Despite a history of violence, and competing religious beliefs, theres nothing from Monis known past to suggest a sudden religious awakening led him to carry out the attack. As a 50-something-year-old and a life-long Muslim, it appears Monis was radicalized by Australias military involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq. His website includes graphic images of Iraqi and Afghani children killed by U.S. drone strikes. Monis joins a laundry list of life-long Muslim terrorists who were radicalized by political and military interactions with the West. Nearly all of ISIS leadership were tortured or detained at Camp Bucca in Iraq. From Bin Laden to the Boston Bombers; from Monis to al-Awlaki, there is no evidence to suggest that a religious awakening led to their adoption of a radically different theology. When the 9/11 attacks occurred, al-Awlaki told journalists: “There is no way that the people who did this could be Muslim, and if they claim to be Muslim, then they have perverted their religion.” In explaining the concept of Jihad, he said, “If there is an invading force from outside, then we would, too, struggle to defend ourselves, and that is where armed combat occurs. So actually, fighting is only part of a jihad, and it’s considered to be a defensive force in order to protect the religion.” The U.S. government had determined al-Awlaki to be a moderate, and he even spoke at a lunch event at the Pentagon. From 2010, however, he had become increasingly disillusioned with U.S. foreign policy. In a “Call to Jihad” lecture he gave that year, al-Awlaki said: We are not against Americans for just being Americans. We are against evil, and America as a whole has turned into a nation of evil. What we see from America is the invasion of countries; we see Abu Grahib, Bagram, and Guantanamo Bay; we see cruise missiles and cluster bombs; and we have just seen in Yemen the death of twenty-three children and seventeen women…..I for one was born in the U.S. I lived in the U.S. for twenty-one years. America was my home. I was a preacher of Islam involved in nonviolent Islamic activism. However, with the American invasion of Iraq and continued aggression against U.S. aggression against Muslims, I could not reconcile between living in the U.S. and being a Muslim.” Al-Awalaki’s radicalization is consistent with the historical pattern of political activists adopting a belief in terrorism when political action fails to bring about change. Religion had nothing to do with this. We watched films. We were shown videos with images of the war in Iraq. We were told we must do something big. That’s why we met,” said Hussein Omar, when interviewed after participating in a plot to bomb the London Underground in 2005. I hope Australians look at the big picture, rather than implement domestic and policing policies based on fear, generalizations, stereotypes, and suspicion.
Posted on: Mon, 15 Dec 2014 20:35:05 +0000
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